dancing naked in my own brilliance

Any day now I am expecting to receive my final divorce papers .............
it was not something that I wanted
but so it is ........
I remember being 18
and having a cousin, a good friend, and neighbours down the street
all getting their divorces in the same month .....
I watched how their lives changed ......
my parents separated for the final time during the same time .......
I had already left home
but I saw my mother struggling
I decided at this time
that I was not going to do that
I was going to find me a man
that would satisfy me in every way
and I would stick with him no matter what
for eternity
cause that is what I signed on for
the for ever and ever part .........
til death do us part ........
so I did my playing ........
even tried out a few relationships,
test drove them so to say ......
along the way ........
when I married I thought that it would be forever
we had already been practicing for almost 4 years after all,
but I married because of old fashioned values, it was a different time then, it seemed the right thing to do .......
he always told me that I was the good wife, the good mother, the best of lovers, even after he left he told me this several times ........
if it was now, I wonder if I would have done it differently .........
but, I regress ........
we were together from the time I was 23 until I was 51 .......... the prime of my life
I have two of the most amazing sons that if not for him, I would not have .......
it was only after he left that the "boys" and I discovered how little input he had actually had in their lives ...........
but he did what he could .........
he had his own demons and has only moved them to a different household ........
I have been told that I enabled him,
that I never allowed him to stand up and be a man,
loving him and making excuses for him ......
but I thought that was what you do when you love someone, you do for them ...........

I realize now,
that it should be
that you do WITH them .........

and now two years later,
it has come around to waiting for the final papers,
I was the one who pushed for them so that I could be free to go my own way ..........
so that once again people would forget and move on and perhaps regain respect for this man who was just too weak to stand on his own ......
the wait ..........
the agonizing wait .........
the point where your life stands still .....

there are times
when I am out somewhere
doing all of the things that I do ......
and I get this sensation of someone watching me ...
and I see him standing there
with such a look of longing ..........
or, I pick up the phone without looking to see who the caller is
and I hear his voice .......
the surprise evident ........
the love and caring still there ..........
and I close my eyes
and answer his socially deemed polite questions
in as non committal way as I can ....
easing out of the conversation as quickly as possible .......
we once used to talk for hours .........
thoughts and words tossed into the air ......
two souls finding their own way,
dancing the dance of life .....
but somewhere along the way
our dances became more frequently solos ......
and other things got in our way.
One of us holding on to the past,
a place where he had put his life on hold, still waiting to live out all of those high school dreams ...
and one of us dancing into the future to avoid the past,
the what had beens ..........
two very different dances .........

and now I wait .........
my dance card has different dances on it now ...
some very different type of dancers ......
some will always have a place in my heart ...
and some fall under the "what the fuck" category ...
I have met some people that I could see dancing with for a very long time .......
and some that you deek into the bathroom on your first available turn on the floor ....

things have changed ........
nothing is ever static and remaining the same ...
I am much wiser now
sadder now
but yet happier than ever before ........
because I now determine my own dance .......

and as I have said before .......
sometime
if you see while driving
through somewhere south west of Toronto,
a shining orb of glowing light
surrounding a woman with blue eyes, freckles and long dark hair, twirling and dancing .....

it will only be me,
dancing naked in my own brilliance

wondering what the heck is taking everyone so long to join me ............

so while I wait for what will come ........
shall we dance???